Video: on the water with state conservation officer Cary Shoutz

Video by:
BRIAN PETERSON

Updated: April 20, 2011 - 5:54 PM

Cary Shoutz is one of 191 enforcement agents who are supposed to protect 12,000 lakes from safety and environmental violation. But some conservation officials, including Shoutz, say their forces have been been stretched by stagnant staffing during a 30-year boom in lakefront development. "I think we should be worried," he says.

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Officials in Minnesota's vacationland can't say 'no' to those who want to break the rules. Since 2005, land-use boards in Cass and Crow Wing counties allowed hundreds of home builders to break rules aimed at preserving the state's most valuable natural resource, according to a Star Tribune review of thousands of pages of building records.